


Cracked

by evilwriter37



Category: Brave (2012)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Crying, Gen, Grief, Screaming, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27078313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilwriter37/pseuds/evilwriter37
Summary: Fergus doesn't believe Merida that the bear is her mother, and slays her. He believes that Merida lost her mind from witnessing the death of her mother and brothers.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Cracked

**Author's Note:**

> This is unedited because I just had to get the idea out of me as fast as possible. I'm not allowed to watch movies anymore.

Fergus brought down his sword, and blood flew everywhere. The bear shrieked as its head and face was cut into, but it was not yet dead. Merida was screaming as she was held back by the clansmen. Fergus paid her no mind. This  _ wasn’t  _ her mother. Her mother was dead, killed and destroyed by this same bear, with not even a body to be found. Had the thing eaten her? No matter. He was getting his revenge. He brought his sword down again and again, and Merida screamed with each blow. Eventually, the bear stopped making sound, stopped moving altogether. It was dead. 

Now, they released Merida. She ran up to Fergus, shoved him, began beating him against the chest.

“That was my  _ mother _ , you  _ savage! _ That was your wife, Elinor!”

Fergus dropped his sword. There was blood splattered on him, blood that was now getting on Merida as she uselessly beat at him with her fists. He grabbed her by the wrists.

“Merida! Merida, that was a bear! Not your mother! Your mother is gone!”

“Because you  _ killed  _ her!” Merida fought her way out of his grasp. She collapsed by the corpse of the bear, sobbing and screaming. “ _ Mum! Mummy! _ ”

And then three bear cubs were coming up to the bear, making wailing noises. Merida had lost her mother, and in revenge, so had they. Fergus turned away from the bloody scene. He ordered men to take Merida back to the castle. She screamed and bit and fought them, but eventually they got her onto a horse and began heading back through the forest. 

Fergus noticed something as he began walking towards his own horse: a tapestry, a familiar tapestry, the one that had been hanging in his room that Elinor had been working on. There was a sewn-up tear through the middle, between Elinor and Merida, and that made Fergus’ grief rush up at him. His wife was dead, killed brutally by a bear, and his daughter had gone mad from witnessing it. He slowly picked up the tapestry with his bloody hands, stared at it, tears welling in his eyes. But he was a king. He couldn’t cry. Not now, when his kingdom was in such peril. Who would marry his daughter now that she had lost her mind? What was he to  _ do? _

  
  


Merida screamed and cried as she was forced into a hot bath. Maudie fussed over her and shushed her, and it did nothing. Her servants scrubbed away at the dirt and the blood, not being very gentle with her, and Merida just kept screaming. Her mother was dead and it was all her fault. And now her brothers were out there in the wilderness, trapped as bears for all eternity. They would grow up as bears, become them in their minds, never die, always scouring the forest for something to eat, something to kill. They would lose their humanity. She’d lost her brothers  _ and  _ her mother in one night, and it was  _ all. Her. Fault.  _

Merida refused to stop screaming. 

  
  


Her door was locked. She pounded on it and pounded on it. She would have screamed but she had no voice left, had no tears. She pounded on the wood until her hands were bloody, wishing someone would come and let her out. Why was she locked up? Why would no one listen to her?

Well, she knew why. It was because she was a girl. Nothing more than a silly,  _ little _ , girl. She was old enough to be married, but not old enough to be listened to her.

But if she’d just listened to her mother, she wouldn’t be dead right now. 

Merida cast herself onto the floor in front of the fire, sobbing tearlessly. Oh, how she wished none of this had happened. Agony was tearing her apart inside, piercing her chest with arrow after arrow. How would she ever recover from this? 

  
  


“She stopped screaming an hour ago,” Maudie told Fergus. “But then she was banging on the door. She’s… not well, my lord.” 

“I’ll see to her,” Fergus said. The clansmen were still awaiting a decision on the marriage, but how was Merida fit to be married now? The queen was dead. All was hopeless. 

Fergus unlocked the door and went inside Merida’s room as quickly as he could before she could make a run for it. He didn’t need her loose in the castle like this. He needed to talk to her. 

“Merida?” He found her on the floor by the fire. She didn’t move, didn’t answer, as if she were dead too. But, he could see her breathing. 

“Merida.” Fergus sat on the floor beside her. “I… I brought the tapestry.” He didn’t understand why Merida had dragged it into the forest, but it must have meant something to her, especially since it depicted Elinor. 

“Get… away from me.” Her voice was hoarse, but rife with venom. She looked at him from under her curls, and her eyes were shining with fire and hatred. Hatred towards him. 

“Merida…” He sighed. How was he supposed to deal with her? The two of them were close. He’d taught her archery, horseback riding, climbing, sprinting… everything she was so good at. But now, this wasn’t the Merida he knew, wasn’t her at all. 

“That wasn’t your mother I killed,” he said. “That was a bear.” There were tears in his eyes. A search of the castle had proven that his boys were nowhere to be found. The bear had gotten them as well. Gods, his chest hurt, hurt so bad, felt like it was going to burst. 

“That was  _ her _ .” Merida sat up, not bothering to brush her mass of hair out of her face. “I tried explaining to you. I saw a witch, and she gave me a spell that turned her into a bear.” 

Fergus shook his head. “Merida, there is no such thing as magic, no such thing as witches.” 

“There  _ is _ ,” she insisted. 

Fergus dropped the heavy tapestry in his lap, grabbed Merida by the shoulders. “Lass, you can’t go on with this nonsense! Your mother is dead because that bear killed her!” How could she be denying this when she herself had witnessed it? Had seeing something so brutal and traumatizing cracked her? Made her lose her mind? 

“ _ You  _ killed her!” Merida scooted away from him, her back dangerously close to the fire. Fergus wanted to grab her and pull her back, pull her into a hug. 

“Then there’s the matter of the betrothal…”

Suddenly, Merida lashed out at him. It happened so fast that he couldn’t stop it. She lunged at him, attacking with her nails, and they gouged sharp across his cheek. He stumbled to his feet, away from her, a hand to his cheek. Blood came away on it. His own daughter had scratched him like she was rabid. 

“I’ll tell the lords you’re unfit.”

“Like Hell I’m unfit!” Merida cried, rising to her feet. “ _ You  _ did this to me! You ruined  _ everything! _ ”

Without a word, Fergus left the room, and locked the door. His cheek burned. 

  
  


Merida sat on her bed with the tapestry wrapped around her like a blanket. Her tears were all gone, her voice almost completely gone. She was clean, and someone had tried bringing her food, but she refused to eat it. Now, the tray sat on her table, taunting her. There was a cake on it, because the cooks knew of her love of desserts. But it had been a cake that had destroyed her mother. She refused to touch it.

Merida turned away from the food, laid down on her side. She hadn’t slept. The sun was glinting through her narrow windows, coming in the brightest through her broken one. There was glass on the floor. That would have to be swept up and the window fixed. 

But none of that mattered. Nothing mattered. Her mother was dead, and it was her fault, and her father’s fault. Her mother was dead and her brothers forsaken, thought to be dead as well.

And her father thought she had seen all of it, thought she had cracked because she’d seen the viciousness of the bear’s attack. 

But she hadn’t cracked. She was telling the truth.

Or, maybe she had cracked because she’d watched her father kill her mother. 

Merida rolled away from the windows, wanting to be encased in darkness. The light was too good for her, too cheerful. There were birds twittering outside. Oh, how she hated them, how she wanted them to be silent. There was nothing to be happy about on this dreary, blood-soaked day. 

Merida found one tear left in her, and it rolled hot down her cheek.

She didn’t wipe it away. 


End file.
